Hi, Mike. Although Keyword Search works for me in a clean test profile, it doesn’t work in my default profile, which has 61 other extensions installed. Perhaps one of them is incompatible with Keyword Search. I don’t know.

Steps to reproduce:
From Keyword Search options, select Google in the Keyword Search Engine dropdown.
Close the Add-ons Manager tab.
Open the Add-ons manager again and select the Keyword Search options.
Expected result: Google is still the Keyword Search Engine.
Actual result: The Keyword Search Engine is blank.
Expected result: Searching from the location bar uses Google.
Actual result: Searching from the location bar still uses the search engine selected in the search bar.
Note: In about:config, the value for extensions.keywordsearch.searchengine is Google.
Note: Including DuckDuckGo, I have 37 search engines installed.

Here’s a list of my current extensions (from Extension List Dumper). The “Incompatible” extensions still work and are being used.
Application: Firefox 23.0.1 (20130814063812)
Operating System: WINNT (x86-msvc)

Took me some time to make it work. As I noted in a P.S. to a review, Keyword Search works by hitting Enter immediately after typing the keyword in the URL bar. Not by using the up-down arrows to highlight the “Search” item at the bottom of the location bar autocomplete list, which nowadays uses the current search engine defined in the browser.

Maybe this should be mentioned on the add-on page at AMO to avoid other users the confusion I had at first.

1. Should the Search button on the URL bar use the Keyword Search engine or the selected engine?

2. Can the search at the bottom of the dropdown be changed nicely? It currently uses browser.search.defaultenginename but oddly if you change that to something like Yahoo, even though it searches Yahoo, the information in the dropdown doesn’t change until you restart. Should Keyword Search allow you to set that engine?

I didn’t try the [ Search ] button which can be customized onto the toolbar. Now that I tried, I see it uses the browser’s default engine.

Here, changing the engine in the Search bar immediately changes all three of browser.search.defaultengine, browser.search.defaultenginename and browser.search.selectedEngine, as well as what is seen in the bottom (differenly coloured) line in the URL bar drop-down. browser.search.defaultengine is a URL, the other two are display names.

But in any case, I view this as neither a bug in SeaMonkey nor in KeywordSearch code, only in KeywordSearch documentation. Once the user knows how to trigger the search with the engine customized in KeywordSearch, it ceases being a problem.

Mike, sorry it took so long to get back to you. I haven’t had a recurrence of the problems I posted on AMO review. I suspect it was related to that one update… maybe I had a connection problem during the update… it happens! Also checking off that option in the pref panel and restarting Firefox fixes the issue of the site loading in the wrong tab. It’s nice to have this feature back… it’s been THE stand-out feature of Firefox over other browsers for me for 7 years now!

“The Ctrl+T / F6 works perfectly (Google) and F6+tab gives me YouTube, as it should. Now, I often highlight text and drag that to in between tabs. That opens YouTube. I selected the selection box and restarted Firefox, but no luck.. what to do? :/”

Dev response:

“If you are using Firefox 25, you can go to preferences and check “If you have problems with searches occasionally loading in the wrong tab, check this box.” If you are using Beta, I’m researching how to fix.”

That’s what I said (or meant to, at least) – I have checked that box, and no, I’m not using Beta. Still not working.

I love this plugin! I’ve encountered one bug. I’m not sure if this is an underlying Firefox problem or something you can patch with your plugin.

If OpenDNS is enabled on the internet connection and when you attempt a one-word search in the Awesome Bar, the search gets redirected to OpenDNS’ 404 page, instead of routing the search to selected engine in Keyword Search.

Is there anyway you can fix this? Other browsers like IE and Chrome do not have this behavior, it only appears to be a Firefox thing.

What ever search engine that I choose in the keyword bar shows up in the search pane like it did before I installed Keyword Search. It only started with the 26 update. Before that it worked fine. I even tried uninstalling Firefox and reinstalling but it didn’t help. I don’t know what my problem is, maybe an update of my other addons is conflicting. I’ll keep trying as love your addon. Thank you.

Which keyword bar? Whatever search engine I select in the search bar appears also as the last (and differently coloured) item in the awesomebar’s drop-down menu; but if instead of using that drop-down menu, I type something (not a URL) in the URL bar *then hit Enter* the search is based on the engine selected in the Keyword Search preferences.

IIUC, the new correlation between search bar and awesomebar searches is due to a change in Gecko or Toolkit (it appears in SeaMonkey too, not just in Firefox). I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it.

Mine stopped working as well directly after update, it really more or less completely stopped working, can still load options screen under addons manager and change things there, but addon does not actually effect anything (i.e. firefox works exactly how it would if keyword search was not installed at all) regardless of changes made on options page.

Your wonderful extension was working fine with me till recently but now something seems to have broken it. 🙁 It was working fine till firefox 25 but now when firefox got upgraded to version 26, I have a problem with the search bar on the firefox Home page. Really, I can’t think of anything else as I have changed nothing else on my system other than firefox upgrade to 26.

My main problem is that I want Google to be the search engine in the location bar/awesome bar, but I want Wikipedia in the small search bar on the right. Also I want to use Google in the search bar on the home page (about:home) . However the search bar on the home page now shows wikipedia also. It seems to be linked now to the small search bar in the top right. whatever I select here also shows in the about:home search. But this is not how it was before…….

I have selected google for the about:home search in the add-on options but seems to have no effect.

Once again I want Google in both Location bar and about:home search bar, but I want Wikipedia in the search bar on the top right in the browser. This was working perfectly till FF25 with your extension but not anymore.

I should add that my location/awesome bar and search bar are working fine. The first one goes to google and the second to wikipedia just as I want them to, it’s only the about:home that is giving the problem after Firefox 26.

The about:home search bar now goes to whatever engine is selected in the search bar (small one on top right.) The selection for about:home in options menu of the add-on seems not to be working anymore.

There is a problem with this addon in Firefox 27.0.1 (on GNU/Linux): it won’t respect the default search engine at first search if it’s done after (re)starting Firefox. I use DuckDuckGo for both settings.

Prior to version 23 of Firefox, your searches in the URL bar were independent of the search you selected in the search box in the upper right. So if you typed “Ford Escape” in the URL bar, it would search Google, even if you had Wikipedia selected in the Firefox search box. After version 23, the URL bar always uses whatever search you have in the search box. So if you select Wikipedia and type “Ford Escape” it will search Wikipedia.

This add-on allows you to specify the search engines used for the URL bar, the about:home page and the new tab page independent of the search in the upper right. Firefox requires that they all be the same.

Firefox allows Keyword Searching via Bookmarks so you can completely ignore the search box if you want to which I do.

Add the parameter %s to any bookmark, give it a keyword and then back keyword bookmark searching.

Because of this feature I have the search engine box completely turned off because it doesn’t provide any benefit over the bookmark keywords so I am just curious what does this addon provide that bookmark keywords don’t?

Bookmark keywords are not a commonly known feature, and it still doesn’t solve this problem. You have to type an actual keyword before your search (g searchterm).

This add-on brings back the functionality that was explicitly removed from Firefox and adds the ability to have about:home and the Firefox 32 new tab pages have separate search engines from the drop down.

First of all thanks for this great addon, I’ve looking for it for years.

There is a relatively small bug about dragging keywords to tab bar. I’ve tested with brand new profile.

Assuming I set the search engine to Google, and the search bar is set to Wikipedia at the moment.

To reproduce it, follow the steps:

1. Open any web page.
2. Select some words (let’s call “keywords” later) on the page.
3. Drag the words to blank space on tab bar (or between two tabs, just like how you drag tabs)

What happens:
1. Firefox will open a new tab on the background, which is searching the keywords with the search engine of your search bar current setting (in this case, Wikipedia).
2. However, in the same time, it will *also* search the keywords on the CURRENT tab with the engine set in Keyword Search, which means override the content you’re browsing.

What should happen:
Without this addon, Firefox will only do the the first part action mentioned above.
With this addon, the optimal action should be: it still only open one new background tab doing search, but with the engine we set at the addon; OR, it could just follow the default behavior of Firefox (using the search bar engine to search). I’m cool with either way as long as it doesn’t override the current tab.

Sorry I know I’m very tedious because I want to make every point clear.

I have a weird behavior of Keyword Search.
I have two computers of different hardware with common internet connection and identical software: Vista Business 32bit SP2 – Firefox 34.0.5.
I have cleared cookies and flushed DNSs, without change in the observed behavior.
On the first computer I selected Google as default and ticked the box “Always use google.com for search” and it behaves as expected (non redirected google search), so I didn’t bother to check behaviors with other settings.
On the second computer I tried the following settings:
1 – Custom (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=) and NO tick in google.com box.
2 – Custom (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=) WITH tick in google.com box.
3 – Google selection as default and NO tick in google.com box.
4 – Google selection as default and WITH tick in google.com box.

All four settings behave identically: search in the URL/Ominibox (I didn’t bother checking in the second search box) leads to a redirected search (in my case google.be).
Now if I connect to the http://www.google.com/ncr page, then all subsequent searches for that session of FF will no longer be redirected, even for setting #3!

I’ve having a slight issue though. It might just be me missing something, but the way I’d like my searches set up is to have the location bar search on google and then the search bar to go to an alternative one.
So the way I do this is to set the add-on to use google as the Keyword Search Engine as this seems to change the location bar search engine.
I’ll then have the Default Search Engine in Firefox set to my alternative search.

The problem is that this changes the search engine used when I right-click on a high-lighted word.
I often use this to quickly search for a word on google, but now it’ll search on the gaming wiki I have as my Search Bar engine.

So what I’m wondering is if there’s a way to have this add-on change the Search Bar engine instead of the location bar one? That way I can set the Default Search in Firefox to google and keep the right-click search option.

Alright, that’s a shame. I thought as much, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overlooking an option to change that.
I’ll just have to get used to using google in the search bar instead of the location bar, as the right-click highlighted word search is invaluable to me.

I was so happy when I found your Keyword Search addon cause I’m used to have “I’m Feeling Lucky” search in the URL bar, so I hope my problem can be fixed because it is about equally annoying as not having “Lucky” search. 😉

I reported an issue with the favicon and name of the search engine disappearing in the search bar. Just wanted to tell you that at the moment everything is working finde again. Maybe Firefox just needed a restart. Thanks for this great addon!

Hi,
Love this addon. Awful choice on FF’s part to change the behaviour.
Unfortunately, it seems to be broken again in FF 37 (beta). Is there anything you can do to help?
Happy to test and provide further info if needed.
Thanks!

Forgot to actually describe the bug…
Keyword search no longer works. e.g. Having amazon as a search engine with the keyword (such as az) will search the currently selected search engine, rather than amazon.

If it helps isolate it, I can also replicate the issue with Firefox Dev Edition too (v38).
Only extensions installed there are ADB helper and Firefox Developer Tools Adapters. Disabled them to check, and the issue persists.

I have exactly the same problem since version 1.1. That is, if I have set up “imdb” as keyword for the IMDB search, and I type “imdb interstellar” in the address bar, it just ignores “imdb” and looks for “interstellar” with Google (or whatever else I set for the default search). Downgrading to 1.0.8.2 solves the problem.

The tests I’ve done so far with no effect:
– tested all recent versions of “Keyword Search”: working fine with 1.0.8.2 and not working with 1.1 and above;
– restarted Firefox countless times;
– disabled all other add-ons;
– uninstalled “Keyword Search”, manually deleted all its settings, and then reinstalled and run it;
– created a new profile and only installed “Keyword Search”;
– tested under Windows XP, Firefox 37.0.1, after a Firefox reset (so a new profile except for bookmarks).

OK, I figured out the problem. We’re talking about two different things. I thought you meant when you right click on an entry field on a web page and “Add Keyword” You’re referring to the fact that you can set a search engine keyword.

Firefox 37.0.2
Version 1.1.3
Setting of context menu to Default behavior always calls DuckDukGo and not the default engine,
because the row ‘engine = Services.search.getEngineByName(enginename);’ return undefined for “noengine”, and we always go to ‘// Somehow’ row. I’ve solved this temporary by modifying manually row in prefs to ‘user_pref(“extensions.keywordsearch.searchengine.contextmenu”, true);’ to generate the necessary exception. It should by thrown manually if the engine is empty. Please, fix it.

Hi there, first off I wan to say that I love this add-on and many thanks for developing it. 🙂

Now, I would like to have an option to open my search results in new tab when performing a search from the Search Bar/Awesome Bar. Could this be added please as an option? This is already accessible through about:config (browser.search.openintab), but not many know about it and so I think this would offer another efficient way of browsing through the Search Bar/Awesome Bar. It would be a great enhancement to your add-on and most definitely more users will benefit from it as I do and many others do.

Thanks dude, I appreciate it very much. One more thing though, is it possible to have a different search engine for Firefox new tab page (the third search bar) through Keyword Search? Is that feasible with your add-on?

Mike,
Can you fix the Awesome Bar showing in the first entry “- Search with XXX”, where XXX is the default engine instead of the selected engine with this add-on? The search will work as expected, but the info given in the Awesome Bar is misleading. It’s independently if search suggestions are enabled or not.

I can see it in a clean profile + Keyword Search, Firefox ESR 45.2.0 Linux.

Maybe Mike can suppress that awesomebar option, maybe he can’t. I’d rather he left it, if only as an option, because this way I get two search engines in the URL bar for the price of one: hitting Enter searches with Keyword Search, selecting the bottom entry in the rolldown gives me the engine currently selected in the browser’s Preferences (or Options).

Maybe that rolldown menu entry has a particular #id or .class (and maybe the DOM Inspector extension can help find that out, though I’m not 100% sure). If it has one, then adding a “display:none !important” CSS rule for it in /chrome/userChrome.css (wher is the profile directory, different in each installation) would make it disappear, with or without Keyword search installed (but not in Safe Mode, and only after a restart).

Actually. I’m Feeling lucky still works but it has a delay now.
When you go to google.com and use I’m feeling lucky, it now shows the google search page for 1-2 seconds and then it redirects to the page to which it would normally redirect back when it used to work well.

Although I don’t really know what I am doing, I added the following value for the awesome bar search and it seems to be working for I’m feeling lucky (with the delay), at least for several terms I tried. NOTE: for .com only

Keyword Search has been functioning with a cumbersome delay that takes me to Google’s results page before going to the top result. I’m not a fan of this; the standard ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ function goes pretty-much-directly to the best result, and alternatively gives search results if there is no true ‘best option’ from which to choose. I prefer to actually stay on the results page when there isn’t a great/lucky answer to my search term.

I also use this in Google Chrome, and it works as expected in both browsers… So,
are there any plans to re-implement the classic ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’?

Also, the ‘Lucky/Ducky’ options don’t work at all for me in the homepage searchbox; can’t speak towards newtab and context menu searches, as I have never used those options – my new tab page is not the standard one.

I love the add-on, I just have one problem. When searching through the awesomebar, it still says I’m using my selected search engine. For example, I have Google as my “Keyword Search Engine” but I have Musicbrainz as my currently selected search engine so when I search it says “Search using Musicbrainz” but when I hit enter it uses Google search.

Situation:
In the latest version(FF51, 64bit, multiprocess enabled), after certain amount of time of firefox opened, the search engine this addon selected will be ignored, it used built-in search engine instead.

It might as well be a Google related issue(I use different localized version such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean – by search within different bar, I can effectively use them without switching search engine manually)

On the left side is the URL/address bar that I want to use for simple keyword searches, e.g. if I type a word/sentence/etc I want it to use my default search engine (DuckDuckGo). On the right side I want to be able to use a different search engine exclusively (in my case a dictionary since I have to translate a lot).

So when pressing ctrl+T it opens a new tab and I can search with my default, if I press ctrl+E it allows me to look up certain words.

Until now I used Keyword Search because it allowed me to use two different search engines just like described above. However, either I’m too stupid to set this up right or it is buggy – for some reason it only works a few times and then things get messed up. Both search bars will end up using the dictionary search engine, while my default (DuckDuckGo) won’t be used anymore. This is driving me crazy.

Not sure what I’m doing wrong because it works for a while and then just stops. Restarting my computer will fix this most of the time, but this is not an option when working. Also I’m not sure how to find out what is causing this exactly, but it seems to occur after a new FF update most of the time.

The browser’s default engine uses the search bar or the bottom (differently colored) line of the URL bar drop-down. On SeaMonkey it also uses the sidebar search. This search engine can be set with the search bar drop-down.

To search with Keyword Search, type your keyword in the URL bar and hit Enter immediately. Don’t use the mouse to trigger the search, it can all be done with the keyboard. This search engine is set in the preferences for Keyword Search.

Mike,
Using Fx esr 52.0 in Linux, I noted that if you write the keyword of any search engine (e.g. ‘y’ for youtube) followed by no text and Enter, the main page of the engine selected via the addon as default for the urlbar (e.g Google) is open instead of the webpage related to the engine (a.k.a. youtube), as it’s expected. It becomes a little pain if you are used to use keywords as shortcuts to those websites for who you have the engine installed. It doesn’t happen with the previous ESR. Can you check it?